Thread: How smart are you(we)?

if a man is running a marathon and he passes the guy in second place, what place is he in now?

Originally Posted by nessmuck

if a man is running a marathon and he passes the guy in second place, what place is he in now?

The man he passed is now in third place.

Whenever a smart person confronts me with a puzzle to test my intellectual mettle, I employ a time honored strategy.... I scratch myself for a while, go take a dump and forget about it. Later, I might get angry and try to harm the smart person but usually I'm too distracted.

My brain hurts now. I'm going to bed.

It took me 56 minutes

Congrats to those of you that solved the question. To those of you that gave it a try and couldn't get the answer, thanks for trying. Einstein wrote this test and said that 98% of the people can't solve it... I don't believe it is a question of how smart a person is but rather how a person thinks. When I was in high school and collage I took numerous aptitude test for no see where I fit in the computer field. The tests didn't have any computer questions but more logic and reasoning. That was a long time ago.

For people reading this post in the future I won't put the answer in here so they can try the test w/o a spoiler. Here is where I found the question and it has a link to the answer: :: Quantnotes.com :: Edutainment ::
Hope you all enjoyed the challenge!

Interesting test. It kept me up until 1:30am on Friday night and I'm not ashamed to say I didn't solve it prior to looking up the answer.

Without "giving anything away" to anyone else I was able to determine everything except where the Dane, Swede or German lived, who had cats, who drank water, who smoked the Pall Malls and the Bluemaster. Especially with the cats, there seemed to be no relation I could pin down whatsoever. It was a fun challenge anyway.

Chris L

It took me about 10 minutes. A simple table 5x5 table is all you really need to do this. There is only one way the table can be filled without violating at least one of the statements. The question itself is not perfect, however, in that it requires an assumption as to the correct location of the first house (right or left).

It took me half an hour to construct a table. And it was probably inferior since I found myself having to go back and doublecheck where I had missed entering clues

I doubt that Einstien formulated this puzzle as he would certainly have been more precise in his statements. As I mentioned earlier, the problem is not clearly stated as it requires an assumption on the part of the solver. If you get this assumption correct, the solution is fairly straight forward, if you get it wrong, the problem cannot be solved. Fortunately for those of use in the Western world, the correct assumption is the one most of us will make. This is not necessarily so for non-western solvers.